My relationship with the musical genre is an odd one. I have always considered myself a musical fan, but the more and more I watch, I realize that I’m more a fervent fan of a handful of melodic masterpieces (My Fair Lady, Singin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and the rest of the acclaimed classics tend to fall in the middle of a sliding scale from bad (The Pirate, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) to middling (Meet Me in St. Louis, Moulin Rouge!) to good (On the Town, Summer Stock). It is with that in mind that I set in to watch the third of the most famous unseen films checked off my 1962 quest, after Lolita and The Longest Day, the Best-Picture nominated film adaptation of the legendary stage show The Music Man.
As I assume most of you reading this now, The Music Man is the story of a conman named Gregory (Robert Preston), affecting the name of Harold Hill who hops off the train in River City, Iowa, a town of rubes and simple townfolk, who he plans to bilk by pretending to start a boys band and making off with the investment funds. He runs into his old pal Marcellus (Buddy Hackett), and they set up grifting the town, including its most stubborn member, snooty librarian and piano teacher Marian (Shirley Jones), who he proceeds to gradually charm as ‘Harold’ becomes torn between his con and his interest in her.
Actually, that’s not totally true. The film is over two and a half hours long and for the first 90 minutes I was thoroughly uncharmed by The Music Man. The plot was obvious, the gags only sporadically funny and the musical numbers ramshackle and unmemorable. But after we passed that ninety-minute mark, about the time a song I know thanks to the Beatles (the lovely “Till There Was You”) filtered in along with a reprise of the rousing “76 Trombones”, it started winning me back, especially since the story required more and more loosening up from the absolutely adorable Shirley Jones, really the only memorably winning presence in the ensemble, character or actor. What impressed me was that Hill really doesn’t commit to loving the town until they all but tar-and-feather him (even during the romantic climax, he’s checking with his buddy in the bushes for the train schedule).
It’s a stringently predictable affair, but most musicals are, so it’s all about execution, especially in the finale, and The Music Man succeeds in a minor key (namely, that kids don’t have to be good for everyone to love their band). It won’t stay with me, and I have little desire to ever see it again, but “76 Trombones” and “Till There Was You” (despite its obnoxious extra “L” in the shortening of “until”) I will be humming all night, and I will at least leave with a genial impression of an all-time beloved classic, which is good. Even if I’d rather watch the sorta-parody SpongeBob Squarepants episode “Band Geeks”, I like liking movies other people like, because it’s never fun to be Squidward.
[Grade: 7/10 (B-) / #63 (of 127) of 1962]
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